After the successful experience of July 2012, North Wales Schools' Games will come back .... and they will take place during the week 7th-14th July 2013!

Inspired by London 2012 Olympic Games, Conlan School promotes North Wales Schools' Games, in partnership with Ysgol Emrys Ap Iwan.

North Wales Schools' Games represents a unique opportunity to bring sport education and language learning together and create an inspirational event for international students which will encourage more young people to take part in sport and develop language skills.

North Wales Schools' Games include the sports of rounders (typical British game), basketball/dodgeball, football, tag rugby and mini marathon plus an excellent variety of lessons and activities which enable reciprocal knowledge and cultural exchanges.

As we all know, Valentine’s Day is celebrated on February 14th in many countries. Some say that the origins of St Valentine’s Day lie in a pagan Roman festival called Lupercalia, before it was rebranded as a Christian feast day by Pope Gelasius in 496AD. The first indication of it being linked with romantic love appeared in Chaucer’s “Parlement of Foules.” But in Wales, there is a Welsh patron saint of lovers. Her name is St Dwynwen and she has an interesting story to tell. She was the prettiest of Brychan Brycheiniog’s 24 daughters and fell in love with a man called Maelon. Unfortunately, she’d been promised to another man, so she couldn’t marry her true love. She asked God to make her forget him, so an angel came and gave her a potion of forgetfulness and turned Maelon to ice. Then she was given three wishes. She chose that Maelon be thawed, that true lovers’ wishes should always be granted, and that she should never marry. These were granted, Maelon was lost, and Dwynwen devoted herself to following God. During her life, she built a convent on Anglesey and died in 465AD.

This has to be the story of the year! Incredibly, the bones of one’s of England’s most notorious kings, Richard III, have been found, yes, buried under a car park. Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets and he died famously in the battle of Bosworth in 1485. Richard became king only because Edward IV, his brother, died and then Edward’s marriage was declared invalid, and thus the eldest son of this marriage, Edward V, could not take the throne. Nevertheless, in Shakespeare’s play about the life of Richard III, we see a most gruesome event, that is reputed to have taken place. The young Edward (12) and his younger brother are said to have been kept prisoner by Richard and later killed. The legend is known now as The Princes in the Tower.
Recently, believing that Richard’s body might have been buried in a long-since disappeared church in Leicester, archaeologists began searching, and eventually bones were found under a car park where the church had been. They used carbon dating and DNA from a descendent of Richard’s sister to confirm that the bones indeed belonged to the infamous monarch. Fascinating!
Source: Wikipedia

Chinese New Year

There will be celebrations in the Chinese community all over the country as the New Year is celebrated this month. This year is the year of the Snake, so if you were born in February or later in the years 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989 or 2001, you will be under the sign of the snake! This means that you are intuitive, introspective, refined and collected. You also don’t easily become frustrated, plus you are graceful, exciting and dark. On the negative side, you don’t like showing your emotions, you can appear cunning and you might even plot and scheme so that you get what you want. Also, you might be quite possessive and not such a great communicator. Your favourite colour might well be red and you’d make a very good scientist, potter, magician or investigator.
Source: www.usbridalguide.com

Phrase of the Month - I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb

As lambs start appearing already in the fields around Wales, let’s look at an idiom containing the word “lamb”
I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb
This is an expression meaning that if you are going to get into trouble for doing something, then you ought to stop worrying and should try to get everything you can before you get caught.

Example “Why steal just a television when we can steal a laptop and a camera too?”
The origin lies in the brutal history of English law. At one time, a great many crimes automatically attracted the death penalty: you could be hanged, for example, for stealing goods worth more than a shilling. Sheep stealing was among these capital crimes. So if you were going to steal a sheep, you might as well take a full-grown one rather than a lamb, because the penalty was going to be the same either way.
Since the law was reformed in the 1820s to end the death penalty for the crime, the proverb must be older; in fact the earliest example known is from John Ray’s English Proverbs of 1678: “As good be hang’d for an old sheep as a young lamb”
Source: www.usingenglish.com and www.worldwidewords.org